http://www.independent.com/news/2017/mar/23/trump-making-soc...
"By cannibalizing expanded Medicaid coverage to the tune of $880 billion, Trump and the Republicans can justify massive tax cuts for a group who needs them the least, the very wealthy and reasonably healthy. [...] Trump and the Republicans have seized upon a much bolder solution: Cut costs by making health care accessible to those who need it least — the young, healthy, and rich."
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/trump-is-the-candi...
"So what do I do? I agree with nearly everything he is for, but I’m better qualified to make it happen. I avoid some issues, but I go for his most popular ones and say, yeah! Want that! And I can make it happen better than he can. I’ve got the experience of working in government, but I’m not the establishment any more than Mr. Trump is. Heck, I’ll offer him a cabinet post. I could use his energy in my administration." -POURNE
http://voxday.blogspot.nl/2016/04/jerry-pournelle-on-donald-...
"But he has never wavered on his desire to fill the Supreme Court with Justices as near in scholarship and view to Scalia as possible; that alone would be enough to get me to the polls for Trump if he’s nominated." -POURNE
"One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense. Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful; now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee." -POURNE
"The man has learned nothing from his presence on MC and sets a bad example of what people might potentially accomplish there. I'd rather recycle his account for some bright 12-yr-old...)" -KMP
Nice to know the internet hasn't changed that much.
1) A group of individuals apparently incensed at some minor infarction by their target.
2) It is not entirely clear why the behavior of their target is wrong, or why it should merit excommunication.
3) The group displays incongruous rage at their target given the apparent wrongdoing, using terms that focus on the target's character rather than the nature of his putative wrongdoing.
4) Certain members of the group are unable to contain themselves and let slip references to the real source of their rage.
5) The expulsion is done by a minor player who does not necessarily take part in the discussion.
6) The summary reason given for the expulsion is different from, and even contradicts the original issue.
R.I.P Jerry Pournelle. Fearless, and always first into the fray.
It was not politically motivated (I am in that thread from 1985). Pournelle was a pain in the neck when drunk. And a blowhard (which is hardly a crime, but doesn't make people sympathetic when you call them assholes and then tell them to do things for you).
As for the proxmiring: he was one of the common offenders; he loved to talk archly about how he was part of the insider elite, while claiming that that was proof of his democratic ideals.
FWIW I did read some of his novels.
In spite of the fact that many of those people who he accused of being "communists" went far out of their way to spend their precious time patiently answering his questions, tutoring and helping him (RMS even personally wrote some free software for him at his request -- how communist is that??!):
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reviews/bookmonth.html
>"I first met Richard Stallman (he called himself RMS in those days) when he was a graduate student at MIT and I was just learning about the ARPANET. He was immensely helpful to me in those days, patiently showing me things about emacs — his full-screen editor that he wrote in TECO, and the less said about TECO the better — as well as adding some special code to take care of things I wanted to accomplish. I learned then that RMS and I have a common failing: We don't suffer fools gladly or indeed at all, and we are sometimes wrong about who is a fool. But that's another story for another time."
But POURNE certainly threatened to use his political connections as a weapon against them. POURNE is the one who made his own politics an issue, who told John McCarthy (the computer scientist, not Joseph the commie witch hunter) that he thought MIT was run by a bunch of communists, and who posted ranting threats on BIX.
Re-read the sputtering mis-punctuated threatening screed he posted to BIX, and decide for yourself if you think he was drunk, or if he just acted that way all the time purely because of his political beliefs:
One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it
for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense.
Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an
ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful;
now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or
perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even
the House Armed Services Committee.
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.sf.writ...
I never let on that the person he "knew" online and the person he knew offline were the same me.
I don't remember if the official MIT AI Lab Tourist Policy was written down at the time POURNE was flushed, of if he agreed to it and signed it like the rest of us tourists did, but it's pretty clear he violated it with his anti-social behavior and bad attitude, he took advantage of the MIT AI Lab for his profit making enterprise BYTE Magazine, promoted his books on SF-LOVERS, he never hesitated to espouse his political beliefs, and he threaten to exploit his political connections for revenge. So flushing him was completely justified, regardless of his politics.
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/tourist-policy.html
>"A tourist sponsored by a laboratory member would generally receive some guidance and tutelage concerning acceptable behavior, proper design techniques for hardware and software, proper programming techniques, etc. The expectation on the laboratories' part was that a large percentage would become educated in the use of the advanced computing techniques developed and used in our laboratories and thereby greatly facilitate the technology transfer process. A second expectation was that some percentage would become interested and expert enough to contribute significantly to our research efforts."
>"13. Any use of the MIT ITS machines for personal gain, profit making enterprise, or political purposes is not a legitimate use of the Laboratories' computer resources."
>"14. These specific statements of policy give a minimum of how a tourist ought to behave to be a responsible user on the MIT ITS system. They are not a complete list of all the ways tourists should or should not behave. Just because some particular anti-social behavior is not listed does not mean that it is acceptable. What a tourist should do is cultivate a good attitude: make a positive effort to anticipate and avoid actions that would interfere with other users. If you cannot tell whether a certain course of action can interfere with any one, find out from someone else before trying it."
When KMP said "The man has learned nothing from his presence on MC and sets a bad example of what people might potentially accomplish there. I'd rather recycle his account for some bright 12-yr-old...)" he could have been referring to good tourists like Rob Griffith:
https://archive.org/details/getlamp-rgriffiths
"I believe on one trip we were touring the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, and we saw some people gathered around this terminal. And we inquired what they were doing, and out of that came this game Zork, and my friend, since he was at MIT, had us get an account, and we were able to log in and figure out what to me looked like an extremely arcane set of commands to actually get this game running. From then on we were pretty much hooked from the first time we actually saw it. I believe we saw it when we were walking through the MIT AI Lab. I was a guest. Even back then there was some pretty amazing stuff in there. To see all these students and professors huddled around this terminal. What are the doing? They had all these incredibly cool Lisp Machines with big gorgeous displays, and a bunch of people were huddled around a machine that's got text. And we were sort of intrigued. I believe that was the first time I actually saw the game, so to speak. You know, I never got names, so I don't know. I was a petrified little 15-year-old kid walking around the MIT lab, so it was a bit of a feeling of "Am I supposed to be here?", and if I am supposed to be here, I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to talk, so perhaps I'll just be quiet and observe."
"Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free."
A quote from my all-time favorite science fiction author, RAH, also seems appropriate:
"TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!"
If you think anything you listed was "free", you're delusional. :-)
You're also laser-focused on one minor incident in a very long, productive life.
I certainly hope for your sake that you're not in Texas or Louisiana or Florida, up to your neck in water, waiting for the climate change deniers in the government to bail you out.
MIT never sent me or POURNE a bill for the all the networking and computer services, personal guidance, tutoring and support we received pro-bono from the MIT-AI Lab staff, so it was free to us, and I for one appreciated it and am grateful.
RMS even custom wrote POURNE some free software at his request. You can't put a price on this: "He was immensely helpful to me in those days, patiently showing me things about emacs — his full-screen editor that he wrote in TECO, and the less said about TECO the better — as well as adding some special code to take care of things I wanted to accomplish."
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reviews/bookmonth.html
But they did send me an official MIT AI Lab Tourist Policy that I had to promise to abide by in order to use their machines, which I gladly signed and returned and followed. And POURNE was flushed because he clearly violated it, not because of his politics.
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/tourist-policy.html
>13. Any use of the MIT ITS machines for personal gain, profit making enterprise, or political purposes is not a legitimate use of the Laboratories' computer resources.
>14. These specific statements of policy give a minimum of how a tourist ought to behave to be a responsible user on the MIT ITS system. They are not a complete list of all the ways tourists should or should not behave. Just because some particular anti-social behavior is not listed does not mean that it is acceptable. What a tourist should do is cultivate a good attitude: make a positive effort to anticipate and avoid actions that would interfere with other users. If you cannot tell whether a certain course of action can interfere with any one, find out from someone else before trying it.
It's so ironic you're trying to Gish Gallop with tired talking point against big government, which funded the ARPANET, and which is currently busy dealing with a series of natural disasters, while you are trying to smear the MIT-AI lab as a bunch of communists. My failure to respond to all of your posts within your expected time frame is because they're simply not worth responding to.
It was clear when I read your initial boorish and tone-deaf remarks on a eulogy thread that you worship at the altar of big government and socialism. Sadly it seems your mind is closed to many of the obvious truths surrounding those entities and human nature.
Be sure to keep a close eye out for Putin skulking around! :-)